Day 4 of national poetry month. The prompt from Imaginary Garden with Toads is to write a poem in the style of Gertrude Stein’s TENDER BUTTONS. I’ve chosen to write about jello, attempting to create a metaphor for life while at the same time, writing a factual description of this food. Challenging prompt!

Published in 1914, Stein’s TENDER BUTTONS is divided into three parts: Objects, Food, and Rooms. It avoids any use of gender specific pronouns. It is considered a masterpiece of verbal cubism and a failure at the same time. Here is an example directly from Stein’s text: